Correspondence

This article surveys the problems facing the existence of intellectuals in the twenty-first century by reflecting on the historical and conceptual conditions that have enabled them to flourish in the past but less so in recent times. The first part considers several strands of contemporary philosophical and social thought that, despite their progressive veneer, have served to undermine the legitimacy of the intellectual's role. This delegitimation is largely traceable to a scepticism about the existence of ideas that are simultaneously normative and manipulable. The second part deals with the rise of anti-intellectualism in philosophy and psychology in the twentieth century, focusing especially on the debates surrounding ‘psychologism’. The third part examines what remains the most attractive expression of anti-intellectualism, namely, invisible-hand thinking and its late nineteenth-century transformation through the influence of statistics, evolution and epidemiology. In the conclusion, the main strands of the argument are drawn together in a sketch of an overall account of the rise and fall of the intellectual in the modern era. Finally, I provide one strategy for stemming the current tide of anti-intellectualism by reinterpreting the currently popular concept of ‘heuristics’.     

Intimate partner violence, social support, and employment in the post-welfare reform era

This prospective study used 3 years of longitudinal data to explore relationships among intimate partner violence (IPV), perceived emotional and material social support, employment stability, and job turnover among current and former female welfare recipients in the immediate post-welfare reform era. Higher levels of current IPV and lower levels of current social support predicted less stable future employment; however, current employment stability did not predict either future IPV or future social support. Current social support did not predict future IPV, and perceived social support did not mediate the relationship between IPV and employment stability during a 3-year period.     

Molecular Assay for Screening and Quantifying DNA in Biological Evidence: The Modified Q‐TAT Assay*

Abstract: A method is described for the quantitation of total human and male DNA. Q‐TAT utilizes end‐point, multiplex polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification of the amelogenin and SRY loci to quantify DNA and incorporates a cloned nonhuman template to detect PCR inhibition. Standard curves of fluorescence from amelogenin or SRY amplicons were generated from amplification of known amounts of NIST traceable SRM‐female or SRM‐male DNA. Curves showed good linearity up to 500 pg of SRM‐template (R² > 0.99) and reliably estimated total and male DNA content in casework samples. The nonhuman pRL_null template included in each PCR was a sensitive indicator of known PCR inhibitors including EDTA, hemin, blue denim dye, and humic acid. Finally, the SRY amplicon was a sensitive indicator of male DNA and, in mixtures, could reliably estimate male DNA present in an excess of female DNA. The Q‐TAT multiplex is a reliable quantitation method for forensic DNA typing.     

Development and Assessment of Postcranial Sex Estimation Methods for a Guatemalan Population

This study tests whether postcranial sex estimation methods generated from Hispanic, and mainly Mexican samples, can be successfully applied to other increasingly common migrant populations from Central America. We use a sample of postcranial data from a modern (1980s) Guatemalan Maya sample (n = 219). Results indicate a decrease in classification accuracies for previously established univariate methods when applied to the Guatemalan study sample, specifically for males whose accuracies ranged from 30 to 84%. This bias toward inaccuracies for Guatemalan males is associated with the smaller skeletal sizes for the Guatemalan sample as compared to the samples used in the tested sex estimation methods. In contrast, the tested multivariate discriminant function classification yielded less sex bias and improved classification accuracies ranging from 82 to 89%. Our results highlight which of the tested univariate and multivariate methods reach acceptable levels for accuracy for sex estimation of cases where the region of origin may include Guatemala.     

Feminism and anthropology

Henrietta L. Moore, Feminism and Anthropology (Polity Press), Cambridge, 1988. Marilyn Strathern, The Gender of the Gift: Problems with Women and Problems with Society in Melanesia (University of California Press), Berkeley CA, 1988.     

Criminal justice policy and the psychology of peacemaking

Psychology which once was a primary influence on the development of criminal justice policy has, in recent decades, lost much of its ability to inform how laws and policies are made that concern punishment and social control. The reason for psychology's loss of inluence can be traced to the war on crime political rhetoric adopted by politicians and criminal justice administrators. This paper argues that an emerging peacemaking perspective in the criminal justice system allows the discipline of psychology to once again inform the discourse on criminal justice policy. Issues such as drug abuse, gun control, and capital punishment are appropriate subjects for a psychological perspective in the national debate on criminal justice policy.